Australian soldier slang of the First World War

Wednesday 29 October 2014
Venue: Ferguson Room, National Library of Australia, Parkes Place, Canberra
6.00pm to 8.00pm, with the usual drinks and nibbles before and afterwards

Come along to our last general meeting for 2014 and meet Canberra editors over a drink and a snack. Then sit back and listen to Dr Amanda Laugesen as she tells about her forthcoming book on Australia soldier slang during the First World War.

Dr Laugeson is the Director of the Australian National Dictionary Centre (ANDC) at ANU and has produced two lexical monographs for Oxford University Press (Convict Words: the Language of the Australian Convict Era and Diggerspeak: the Language of Australians at War) while working at the ANDC, as well as working on a number of other projects relating to the history of Australian English. She has also worked as an Editorial Assistant on the Australian Concise Oxford Dictionary.

Amanda’s research includes publications in the areas of historical memory, the history of reading, libraries and publishing, cultural history (with a particular interest in the cultural history of war), the history of Australian English, and lexicography. Her most recent book, Boredom is the Enemy: the Intellectual and Imaginative Worlds of Australian Soldiers in the Great War and Beyond (2012), was a study of Australian soldiers’ experiences of education and entertainment during wartime. Her current research projects and interests include: the history of Australian dictionaries and dictionary-makers, the language of Anzac, the history of print culture and Australian English, Australian literary culture, and the global history of publishing, libraries and literacy.